The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) has defined multiple levels of autonomous vehicle operation. At levels 0-2, a human driver monitors or controls the majority of the driving tasks, often with no help from the vehicle. For example, at level 0 (“no automation”), a human driver is responsible for all vehicle operations. At level 1 (“driver assistance”), the vehicle sometimes assists with steering, acceleration, or braking, but the driver is still responsible for the vast majority of the vehicle control. At level 2 (“partial automation”), the vehicle can control steering, acceleration, and braking under certain circumstances without human interaction. At levels 3-5, the vehicle assumes more driving-related tasks. At level 3 (“conditional automation”), the vehicle can handle steering, acceleration, and braking under certain circumstances, as well as monitoring of the driving environment. Level 3 requires the driver to intervene occasionally, however. At level 4 (“high automation”), the vehicle can handle the same tasks as at level 3 but without relying on the driver to intervene in certain driving modes. At level 5 (“full automation”), the vehicle can handle almost all tasks without any driver intervention. The vehicle may operate in one or more of the levels of autonomous vehicle operation. According to the above definitions of this disclosure, therefore, nonautonomous modes of operation may refer to levels 0-1, semi-autonomous modes of operation may refer to levels 2-3, and fully autonomous modes of operation may refer to levels 4-5.
Fully autonomous vehicles may be manufactured without vehicle controls, e.g., a steering wheel, an accelerator pedal, a brake pedal, etc. Even for fully autonomous vehicles, situations can exist in which manual control of the vehicle by an operator is useful, for example, a service technician moving a vehicle around a repair shop. In those situations, the service technician may be outside the vehicle. It is therefore a problem that a vehicle may omit manual controls, i.e., controls for steering and speed and/or that a user may not be able to exercise control outside the vehicle.